


Written in the Blood

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Major Character Injury, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 05:59:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1768048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson was a doctor once. What can he be now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in the Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tripleransom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tripleransom/gifts), [stardust_made](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/gifts), [spacemutineer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/gifts).



> **Warnings** : Magical AU. I'm not a doctor, or even particularly medically knowledgeable; sorry for any inevitable goombahs. 
> 
> **Beta by** : the marvellous [**monkeybard**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/monkeybard)
> 
> **Additional notes** : Dedicated to the wonderful pinch-hitters from the most recent round of [**acd_holmesfest**](http://acd-holmesfest.livejournal.com): spacemutineer, marta_bee, tripleransom, and stardust_made. I know at least some of you like AUs, and all of you deserve roses.

  
  
I had occasionally dreamed of what it might be like to return to medical practice. Mused upon it more than once, actually, particularly as my health gradually improved from the wretched state it had been in when I first returned from abroad. Although I had made gains, I knew that I could never again achieve the full skills I had once had. The delicate intricacies of mending flesh and bone, whether or not surrounded by the distractions of the battlefield – I could never return to that. But the general hurts and maladies of a doctor’s round in London, simple receipts for the catarrhs and coughs, the sprains and minor injuries? I thought that those might well be within my capabilities, even lessened and shattered as I was. I could be a doctor again, and more; I could earn an independent living apart from my pension.  
  
It was tempting Fate to hope thus, but I have always been a gambler.  
  
Fate, as I well knew, has a cruel sense of humour, and does not look kindly upon hubris. A lesson I had learned more than once and yet apparently not well enough.  
  
“Hold still,” I hissed, pressing one hand against Holmes’ upper left side with as much pressure as I dared. I could feel his blood, warm and sticky and far too much of it, soaking through his clothes.  
  
My friend grunted, going almost as white as his linen – or as white as it had been before we left Baker Street. It was no longer pristine as it had been then. Still, he managed to speak, and even attempted pleasantry. “Easy, dear fellow; I’m sure it’s but a scratch.”  
  
A police whistle sounded, followed by many others, and Holmes mustered up a shadow of a sardonic grin. “Inspector MacPherson and his men, late, but better - ” His voice broke off in a groan even his iron will could not suppress.  
  
It was not a scratch. He knew it, but I knew it far better. The bullet had struck Holmes high on his left chest. An inch to the right, and it almost certainly would have killed him; an inch more to the left, and it would have either lodged in his arm, or passed through empty air between chest and arm and missed him entirely. But it hadn’t gone to the left or the right, and his blood stained both of my hands. I knew with a surety born of the battlefield that I needed to act, and act swiftly. There was no time for a constable to find us, for help to be summoned, for a _qualified_ doctor to arrive.  
  
Holmes needed more than a half-crippled, out-of-practice, officially pensioned-out Army medic. He needed me to be the man I had been before the cursed bullet ended my career.  
  
I had to try. I had none of the proper tools, not even my doctor’s bag, but I had knowledge, and will, and the words of the best instructor I’d ever had at Netley. Words I never forgot. “All the fine instruments in the world cannot help you if you do not have the skill, knowledge, and power in your hands to wield them. With enough of the latter, you don’t even need the former.” And he’d proceeded to demonstrate as much.  
  
I loosened Holmes’ cravat and undid his waistcoat and shirtfront one-handed, keeping pressure on the wound with the other for as long as possible. I needed to bare the damage to my sight, be able to touch and examine it directly, in order to know exactly what must be done. Holmes, ever swift to understand even _in extremis_ , bit his lip and attempted to help my efforts. I swore at him for trying to move, and he subsided, but his eyes never left my face.  
  
I wound up ruining both his waistcoat and shirt in the struggle to expose the injury, but they were almost certainly a lost cause anyhow.  
  
And I saw red.  
  
My eyes saw red blood and pink muscle torn open and exposed from under the protective skin. Touch told me yet more: the volume of blood pulsing past my fingers suggested more than just rent muscle and tissue, but damage to an artery or vein as well. Proof, as if I needed any more, that there was no time.  
  
Keeping one hand pressed on the wound, I awkwardly used the other to fish out the fountain pen from the inner breast pocket of my coat.  
  
A sharp hiss of air escaped Holmes’ clenched teeth as he saw it. “Watson - ”  
  
“Save your strength, Holmes, and don’t talk,” I admonished, almost by rote. Inwardly, I was focused on what I must do next. Steeling my nerve, I plunged the pen nib-down against the back of my other hand with enough force to pierce the skin. Blood welled up around the metal, not much, but enough. The pain of it was far greater than one might expect from such a minor wound, and throbbed far more than the small nick I might have made with a knife or a scalpel in more controlled circumstances.  
  
Still, there was far worse to come. I withdrew the pen from my hand. Scarlet coated the tip, and a single drop started to form at the end. Before it could fully form and fall, I dipped the pen-nib into the edge of Holmes’ wound, mingling our blood together before starting to write on his flesh.  
  
Agony flared throughout my body. The centre of the pain was my old wound, where the curse from the Jezail bullet had initially taken hold, and the ghosts of the metal still lingered. The curse had spread throughout my blood and bones and set long before Murray had been able to bring us to safety and me to the care of another doctor. That man had either lacked the skill to remove all the fragments of the bullet, or the time to do so in the face of so many casualties, or merely failed to realize the need. Whatever the cause, by the time I came into expert hands, it was too late. The curse nearly killed me, and lingers in my body to this very day, tied inexorably to my own healing energies. Any attempt to heal beyond the simple physical remedies – compounding physics, cleaning and stitching wounds, and the like – any effort to call upon any magic-based healing woke the fire.  
  
Always before, I had been unable to continue past the first few moments when attempting to heal. The pain caused my hand to shake, blurring the words. This time, despite feeling the tremors, I somehow forced myself to continue, the words to remain steady as I penned a description of my friend’s whole, unmarred shoulder - even as my healing senses told me the true extent of what I fought to repair.  
  
 _Damage to the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor muscles, as well as the serratus anterior. A widening tear in the lateral thoracic artery. The onset of hypovolemic shock._  
  
Against that growing litany of disaster stood my words, and behind them, my will; fighting back both Holmes’ injury and the rising tide of torture bringing sweat to my forehead and tears to my eyes. A clinical description of perfectly healthy, perfectly whole musculature; a precise account of a fully functioning and intact axillary artery system, including the lateral thoracic artery; a detailed recital of the normal function of the axillary and upper subscapular nerves; a brief but thorough examination of proper blood pressure and blood volume of a British male of Holmes’ height and weight.  
  
By the time I finished writing all that, I could scarcely feel my own body at all; it was all pain, all ravaging fire and deadly cold. Still I continued, describing unbroken skin – but more than just the clinical. Somehow I found myself inscribing a true account of _Holmes’_ skin, the ivory-coloured flesh of his shoulder, as I had seen it in hotel-rooms and bath-houses; the two small moles on his chest, noted in passing when stitching up a previous injury; the fine texture of his epidermis itself, how it had felt beneath my fingertips when I pressed my hand to it in order to steady him when tending other minor wounds. I _knew_ Holmes’ body far better than I had ever realized, and I used that knowledge now, authoring a complete account of my friend, healthy and unharmed, as I knew him to be. As I willed him to be. As I _wrote_ him to be, with all my power and skill and heartfelt will behind every excruciating letter.  
  
I blinked, and my pen came to a halt. My blurred eyes focused first on the blood still staining Holmes’ flesh and clothing, but then recognized the whole, unbroken skin beneath those stains. I looked up and met Holmes’ pain-free gaze, the wonder and astonishment rising in his eyes, the triumphant grin breaking across his face.  
  
“Watson. You’ve done it!”  
  
I think I tried to smile in answer to his words. The pen dropped from my hands, no longer needed.  
  
It was the last thing I remembered for three days.  
  
*****  
  
“Anstruther tells me he’s never seen such a complete healing,” Holmes told me from where he sat in his usual chair, regarding me intently. I laid on the sofa, still not up to the strain of sitting in my usual seat opposite his next to the fire.  
  
Although I had finally awakened fever-free from the days-long stupor into which the use of my healing gift – and the reaction of the curse – had thrown me, I was still too easily fatigued, cold, and sore all over to wish to trust myself to the wicker chair and its occasionally treacherous prone-to-slump pillows. For now, the softer support of horse-hair cushions, the warmth of wool blankets, and the comfort of a hot water-bottle at my feet suited me far better.  
  
“Particularly given the lack of any kind of proper medical equipment,” he continued. “He was thoroughly impressed. I do believe he would like to speak to you about how you did it.”  
  
I felt myself flush. “It was nothing that extraordinary, Holmes. Any well-trained healer could have done as well, or even better. I simply have some significant experience in improvisational healing under less than ideal circumstances, that’s all – something nearly every Army doctor obtains in short order.”  
  
“I somehow doubt every Army doctor could reproduce such results,” my friend replied dryly. “In fact, I should be surprised if one in a hundred could do half as well as you did, else battle scars and pensions for those too wounded to remain in the ranks would not be nearly as common as they are.” A moment’s pause, and then Holmes bit his lip and looked as close to uncomfortable as I had ever seen him. “My apologies, Watson. That was tactless even by my standards.”  
  
“But true all the same. You did not offend me,” I assured him.  
  
“I am glad. I would never wish to do so.” Despite his ready acceptance of my words, Holmes still looked unsettled. A strange pause ensued, broken finally by his speaking again. “I suppose you will apply to return to the Army, now that your gift has reasserted itself. They shall be very glad to get you back again, I’m sure.”  
  
My jaw dropped. I blinked and searched his countenance, looking for any sign that this was a joke, but my friend was deadly serious. All at once I put the facts together: Holmes’ searching gaze, his near-constant attendance during my convalescence, his conversation with Anstruther and the conclusions he must have drawn from it. My throat tightened, and I swallowed, attempting to loosen it. “My dear fellow, I thank you for the compliment, but I assure you the Army would not have me back even if I were foolish enough to apply, which I assure you I am not. My vanity would hardly support the endeavour, even if my wits were so impaired and my conscience deadened enough to make the attempt.”  
  
I rarely manage to surprise Holmes, but it required no detective capability to see that I had done so. “But you healed me perfectly!”  
  
“And rendered myself useless for days afterwards,” I pointed out. “The Army has no use for a doctor who makes _himself_ a casualty every time he uses his healing gift. And I would be. The curse is not gone, Holmes.” I knew that for a certainty. I could still feel it in my blood, my bones, in the lingering sensation of molten lead choking my lungs and paralyzing my heart. “Yes, I managed to heal you despite it, but I used to be able to heal man after man, hours at a stretch, nowhere near as perfectly as I did you, but well enough that their scars would be light ones, for the most part, and they would be able to return to the battlefield within days or weeks, not months. I would rest for a few hours, then return to do it again and again, day in and day out sometimes, when fighting was fierce. I shall never be capable of that.” I shook my head. “Given the reaction I just experienced, I probably should consider what remains of my gift as a tool of last resort. Certainly not an ability to be relied upon, much less one worthy of the uniform.” Despite my best efforts, I could not keep an edge of sadness from my voice.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Holmes snapped. “You are more than worthy.”  
  
My friend’s quick defence pushed away the melancholy brought on by my rational accounting of my worth – or lack thereof – as a healer. “Thank you.  I fear, however, that the Army cannot share your high opinion. So you are rather stuck with me as your fellow-lodger; you need not fear that I shall be called back into service.” I paused as another thought crossed my mind. “I hope that is not inconvenient.”  
  
Holmes stared, and then his high, singular laugh rang out. “Inconvenient? Rather say that your presence is _most_ convenient, and you would be far closer to the facts.” His mirth subsided, but a warm glow remained in his eyes as he looked at me. “The Army’s loss is most definitely my gain, and not merely in sharing the expense of lodging. I find your assistance with cases most useful, you know. At least, I hope you know.”  
  
I had hoped as much, but Holmes had never said it before with such clarity or conviction. Emotion rose within me, too close to the surface. I reached for the words to settle it back, put it in its proper place for myself, for Holmes, for an English gentleman and retired Army doctor. “If I did not know it before, I have no excuse for not knowing it now,” I said as lightly as I could manage. “And it is my honour and privilege to assist you. Thank you.”  
  
“No, Watson. Thank _you_.”  
  
A moment stretched between us, one I could not define with words or with magic. Then a soft tread on the stairs announced the approach of Mrs. Hudson’s maid, likely with afternoon tea, and the moment dissolved with a quick flash of Holmes’ teeth as he grinned. “And besides which, without your timely assistance, I might never have been able to play the violin again. What would you care to hear, dear fellow?”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted June 10, 2014


End file.
